Poultry producers face growing difficulties in controlling poultry manure pests, particularly house flies. Expanding urbanization and public concern about flies near poultry facilities lead to confrontation or litigation. Producers have few chemical options available for fly control because of insecticide resistance and loss of insecticides to regulatory concerns. Proven biological and cultural control options provide alternatives to the use of insecticides and support existing natural enemies of the house fly. This project will provide producers with a renewable fly control option using an important natural enemy of flies associated with poultry houses. The hister beetle, carcinops pumilio, is a significant predator of fly eggs and larvae that occurs in large populations in aged poultry manure. However, manure cleanouts destroy the beetle population which then re-establishes slowly. In contrast, the fly population re-establishes quickly, usually resulting in a fly outbreak. Producers could avoid fly outbreaks by artificially establishing the hister beetle into the manure before house flies become established. During our Phase I research, we designed a self-releasing trap for transferring beetles to new manure packs. Phase II research will develop an on-farm system for sustaining newly released beetles and start a prototype facility for mass producing the beetles.Applications:Ipm laboratories anticipates developing methodologies to promote and facilitate the re-establishment of the hister beetle, carcinops pumilio, a naturally occurring biological control agent of house flies in poultry houses. The company expects to commercialize the hister beetle in two ways: 1) mass produce hister beetles for purchase by poultry producers; 2) provide poultry producers with a system to collect and store the beetles.
